STORES Magazine - September 2008 - (Page 48)

NUTS AND BOLTS / WEB OPTIMIZATION Speed Sells Faster page loads drive increasing revenues for JC Whitney BY CRAIG GUILLOT A few seconds might seem like an insignificant period of time, but it may as well be an hour when customers are waiting for a web page to load. Retailers are discovering that in order to maximize online sales, their websites must be operating at optimal performance. Through solutions from Internet technology giant Akamai, auto parts marketer JC Whitney & Co. discovered that adding a little bit of speed to a website can result in lots of additional revenue. It has boosted page-load speeds by 50 percent, leading to a 10 percent increase in conversion rates. One of the largest direct marketers of name-brand automotive parts and accessories, JC Whitney offers more than six million items that cover more than 25 million automotive applications. It sells parts for cars, trucks and motorcycles dating to the 1920s. A cataloguer for more than 90 years, JC Whitney has significantly shifted its business to the web in the new millennium, says vice president of e-commerce and technology Geoffrey Robertson. Since 2001, it has implemented features like personalized recommendations, live chat, third-party advertising, product reviews and Q&A sections. As JC Whitney’s web operations grew, so too did the need for more advanced technologies. Robertson had used a number of tools over the years to moni48 STORES / SEPTEMBER 2008 JC WHITNEY ON THE WEB Page-load speeds Conversion rates up 50% up 10% 75% of shoppers who have a poor experience on a website will not return tor performance, including the Gomez Experience First platform that allows management of web applications from development through deployment. By pinpointing sales and activities geographically, it didn’t take long to discover that website load speeds were slowing down significantly in coastal states – and that sales were declining there, too. “We weren’t sure if it was economic or technology-related but we were able to start seeing a correlation with the decline in sales with disproportionate declines in service,” Robertson says. In the world of high-speed e-commerce, a 10-second wait doesn’t feel much different from a checkout line 10people deep. Most of the time, shoppers blame the retailer when a page is slow to load – and many of them aren’t inclined to wait. Handling approximately 20 percent of the world’s Internet traffic, Akamai leverages advanced technologies to ensure that web pages load as quickly as possible. The company’s Dynamic Site Accelerator is built on a platform of more than 34,000 servers and 1,000 networks in 70 countries. For its customers, this translates into performance that is up to five times faster than their original web infrastructure. More than 75 of the top 100 retailers use the company’s platform to boost website performance. A 2006 study by Jupiter Research found that after waiting four seconds for a web page to load, one-third of consumers will abandon the query, and the report ranked poor site performance second only to high prices and shipping WWW.STORES.ORG http://WWW.STORES.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of STORES Magazine - September 2008

STORES Magazine - September 2008 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page Office Depot Unveils First Green Store Dunkin’ Donuts Debuts DDSMART What Shoppers Think 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Are You a Facebook Fan? RFID Concept2Watch E-commerce Supply Chain Marketing ERP Credit Web Optimization LP Vantage Point Newsbeat Cover Story LP Program Building Biometrics Industry Perspective Customer Service Site Selection E-Commerce LOEB Retail Letter Arts Update Point of View NRF News Retail Crossword Retail Industry Calendar Last Laugh

STORES Magazine - September 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.